PORTABLE CHILDHOODS
This innovative collection offers a tantalizing
glimpse of what lies hidden just beyond the ordinary.
Collected here for the first time (and with three
new stories never before published), this is short fiction at
its best, emerging from a distinctive, powerful voice -- timeless
and delightful, chilling and beautiful.
"Basement Magic," which appears in
this volume, won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 2005.
The collection also contains "The Green Glass Sea,"
thestory that became the basis for Ellen's breakout first novel,
The Green Glass Sea,
which won the 2007 Scott O'Dell Award for historical fiction.
Starred Review in Publisher's Weekly: Klages,
whose debut novel, Green Glass Sea (2006), won the Scott
O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, demonstrates both superior
writing skill and a wide range in an impressive short story
collection that defies easy categorization. The 16 selections,
three of which are original to the volume, include moving mainstream
tales of human relationships, like the title story, about a
mother and daughter, as well as fantasy and science fiction.
The author is equally adept at short, twisty narratives that
make the most of premises that could be gimmicks in lesser hands,
like the recursive "Mobius, Stripped of a Muse." This
collection will linger in the memory long after reading.
Connie Willis says: "Ellen Klages
believes books can be magic, and now she's delivered the proof:
this spell-weaving collection of her short stories. There
are so many smart, funny, troubling treats here about so many
things--childhoods, chefs, God, barbershops, the atomic bomb--that
it's nearly impossible to pick a favorite. Just read them
all! They're great!"
Peter Straub says: "Ellen
Klages' work seems as transparent as spring water, but this
is a woman who knows that clarity and simplicity can pierce
the heart."
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